


Uphold the Creed

by Chajiko



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, Hurt/No Comfort, Loneliness, Malik makes me sad, My Man Malik, Slice of Life, mention of suicide in future chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:44:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chajiko/pseuds/Chajiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik al-Sayf--bitter, thorny, fierce protector of all those he holds dear.  A series of drabbles touching on various parts of the Sword King's life.  No pairings currently, will not contain slash.<br/>Drabbles added in bunches each chapter--starting out with four.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From Masyaf

_He is dead. He is dead--dead.  He is dead._

The mantra repeated itself in Malik’s head, almost unbidden now after two days bed-ridden after the utter disaster in Solomon’s Temple.  There was nothing to be done—there was nothing that could have been done.  Taking the Apple and fleeing before de Sablé’s men did to him the same thing they had done to Kadar was the only way to ensure that the mission had not been a total loss.

_Kadar is dead._  

In the darkness of his cell, alone with the patch of moonlight that streamed in through the high window, Malik al-Sayf wept.

———————

“Infection,” the surgeon said grimly, touching with gentle fingers the swollen, disfigured flesh that was all that was left of Malik’s left elbow.  “I was afraid of this--and the bone is well and truly crushed.”  He glanced at his patient’s face, noting the distant look in the glazed eyes, and his mouth tightened.  
“Malik,” the surgeon said, leaning over his patient and putting a considering hand to the other man’s forehead.  “Damn it, your fever is spiking.  We need to take your arm—it is past saving.”  
A faint smile curved Malik’s lips, the expression one of intense bitterness.  
“Do it,” he said hoarsely.  “Clip my wing before it poisons what is left of me.”

Malik would always remember the sound of the saw.  The opium, welcome though it was, could not mask the pain of the metal teeth as they bit into what had once been supple, toned flesh, and the sound of steel grating on bone echoed long in his nightmares. 

——————— 

He had almost managed to push all thought of Altaïr out of his mind—but it couldn’t last long.  The news of his fellow Assassin’s demotion did little to quell the desperate knot of pain in his chest, a bitter mix of betrayal, hatred and grief, and he couldn’t even think of the other’s face or voice without his mind going almost blank with rage and with hurt.    
  
It was difficult to ignore Altaïr, however, when you had just collided with him coming around a corner.  Altaïr gripped Malik by his good arm, saving the slighter man from a nasty spill.  He’d only been back on his feet for a day or so, and had been alarmed at the general lassitude in his normally responsive body.  
The Eagle of Masayf did not speak, merely gave Malik a startled flash of golden eyes from under his hood—and his fingers readily released their hold when Malik stepped deliberately back wordlessly.  
“...Safety and peace, Brother.”  Altaïr said at last, softly, the words floating like motes of dust in the sun-stained air.  
Malik opened his mouth, barbed words stinging his tongue in their haste to tumble out, but Altaïr was already gone. 

————————  
  
“ _Rafiq—_ ” Malik’s voice was thin, a little desperate, and Al-Mualim could hear it.  His gaze was steady as he looked upon his maimed student, but it was not without sympathy. 

“This is not a demotion,” Al-Mualim said, rising to pace the width of his small library, hands clasped behind his back.  

“I can still fight,” Malik said, good hand clenched into a fist on the tabletop, knuckles white.

“Of this I have no doubt,” Al-Mualim said, a faint smile touching his lined face.  “You would fight if all you had left to you was a single finger and your toothless gums.  However--” He turned a sharp eye on Malik.  “You cannot deny the reality of your situation, Malik.  Your wound is a mark of honour, but it will not allow you to be what you once were.  Your mind is as sharp as your blade, boy, and it is time to put that to use.”

Malik subsided—leave it to Al-Mualim to couch that particular bitter reminder in just the right amount of praise.    
“So I am to sit in the Bureau and wait for others to bring me news.”  Malik fought to keep the bitterness from his voice.  “Tend to their wounds and their needs, and then send them out again to do the great deeds.”

“You could do that, I suppose.”  Al-Mualim’s voice was dry.  “Or you could be what I have hopes you will have the sense to become—the spider at the center of your web.  Your web, Malik, will span all of Jerusalem.  This is no job for the faint of heart.” 

Malik stared down into his lap, jaw set against the dull ache of his healing arm and the much sharper sting of his damaged pride, still for a very long moment.  
  
“...I will serve the Brotherhood,” he said at last, voice quiet and razor thin.  “I will uphold the Creed.”

 

 


	2. Jerusalem

Map-making had always been a favoured hobby for Malik al-Sayf. Others had called it tedious (sometimes unkindly adding that that was, perhaps, the reason why it so suited Malik), but he found the meticulous process to be soothing. Each stroke of the quill on the vellum left behind a glistening black line of ink, precisely placed and carefully measured.

Of course, it took some time to become used to handling the quill, blotter and inkwell all with his right hand only, and he ruined a dozen maps before he got the hang of it.  
\------  
The Jerusalem Bureau was a strange place. Its front was innocent enough, the two-story building graced with a facade that indicated its function as a map-maker’s shop and book-dealer, and topped with the roof-top gardens that offered some grace and shade even in the heat of the summer.  
The book-shop itself was innocuous. The man who seemed to be perpetually behind the counter was a little surly, but the quality of his maps more than made up for his short temper. Behind the shop was a short corridor, and if one craned one’s neck, one might see a tiled courtyard beyond, graced with a tinkling fountain and trailing vines. Doubtless the map-maker Malik lived in the chambers behind his shop, and this accounted for the lamps that sometimes shone in odd hours through the windows, and the occasional coming and goings on the quiet street long after the moon had set.

No one ever saw, though, the shadows that slipped through the grate in the garden floor to drop to the courtyard below--they were ghosts, mere breaths in the hot summer air.

\------  
Malik grew to dread the sound of the Jerusalem alarm bells. The first time he had heard them tolling he’d encountered a troop of unfriendly guards. He had barely extricated himself both uninjured and without identifying himself as the assassin he was, rather than the cripple he appeared to be.

The next time he heard them, Altaïr appeared mere moments later in the shadowed bureau and dropped a blood-soaked feather onto Malik’s work.

“Safety and peace, brother.” Altaïr said quietly.   
“Your presence here deprives me of _both_ ,” Malik replied through gritted teeth, shaking the bloody feather off of the stained and ruined map.

From then on, whenever he heard the bells begin to toll, he made sure his maps were tucked securely away.

\------  
It was the first snow in Jerusalem that finally did him in. He’d heard old men in Masyaf who had lost hands and arms and various other bits groaning at the cold, speaking of the pain or needles in the lost limb, their minds unable to convince the severed nerves that there was nothing there anymore to hurt.  
In the cold he had felt the _ache_ , and sometimes it had bitten deep into what remained of the bone and muscle of his left arm, but it had never gone beyond what was manageable--at least not until the grey December sky above Jerusalem finally gave up its bounty of snow, coating the city in white.

The pain had come on him suddenly, all the muscles in his left hand and forearm seizing at once, grinding the bones together. He yelped involuntarily and jerked his right hand to grasp his left wrist--and his fingers closed on empty air.


End file.
